Monday, January 01, 2007

The Alabama Soap Opera Continues

Depending on who you believe, Nick Saban is either a) going to remain coach of the Miami Dolphins or b) ready to take all the money in Alabama and become the Crimson Tide's coach. The Miami Herald is reporting that indications point to Saban staying with the Dolphins. The Tuscaloosa Times and the Birmingham News, among others, report that Saban is expected to meet with Alabama officials perhaps as early as Monday. Somebody is wrong here, but if Saban is a man of his word, then he will remain at Miami. If not, then has Alabama has hired a liar. Simple as that. So if Saban says no for the third or fourth or fifth time (we lost count), then the Crimson Tide could be looking at Louisville coach Bobby Petrino, above, according to the Palm Beach Post.

1 comment:

If Saban is a man of his word, then he will remain at Miami. If not, then has Alabama has hired a liar. Simple as that.

That being said, check out this New York Times excerpt from your Crewcut Charlie post of December 30th:

Most sociologists and psychologists who have written about the subject of lying say it can be justified--from answering “fine” when someone asks, “How are you?” to deceiving someone who intends harm.

A blip in the vast gray area between is the deception surrounding a coaching change. Particularly in the high-profile sports of college football and basketball, coaches must wrestle with lying, or with telling the truth and receiving the scorn of employers, players, alumni, recruits and the news media.

“I think people lie about it if they are not sure they’re going to get the job or take the job,” said Carolyn Saarni, a professor in the graduate department of counseling at Sonoma State (Calif.) University and the co-editor of a 1993 book called Lying and Deception in Everyday Life.

Coaches worry about how it will affect their current relationships, not their potential ones.

“The motivation for lying is an interpersonal one,” Saarni said in a telephone interview yesterday.

It is also a stalling tactic.

“I very rarely have heard a coach say, ‘Yeah, I’m very interested, it’s been a dream of mine all my life to coach there,’” Maher said in a telephone interview Thursday. “The individual is keeping you out of his space.”

He called false denials “deception and deflection.”

“They are hoping that people will go away and not ask the question again,” Maher said.

If new coaches were found to have lied on their résumés, they would probably be vilified and dismissed. But denying interest in a job, and then accepting it, is such an accepted practice that the teams jilted by deception receive little sympathy as they set about filling the unexpectedly vacant position--perhaps with someone else who will not tell the truth about their interest in the job.

“They certainly don’t define those as lies,” said Jay Coakley, the author of Sports in Society and a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. “They would say they are necessary forms of deception to keep things stable within their own organization.”

New employers shrug it off because they know that is how the game is played.

Lying during a job search certainly is not unique to sports. An employee may lie to an employer about interviewing for other jobs. Some may use interviews simply for leverage in their current job, with no intention of accepting the position. Those are common tactics in a capitalist society, Saarni said. “I see it as part of a larger social rubric, where self-interest is valued more than the broader, collective well-being,” she said.